Microsoft is reportedly auto-installing the HP Smart app on Windows 10 and 11 PCs

Which is a terrible app. I made the mistake of buying a HP printer and that app crashes more than it works (and the printer doesn't work without it, of course).
- Wait, you have to have an app to print? On Windows? Can't you just install the driver and print using the Windows print interface? I understand that they have software that might have extra features, but basic printing should only require a driver, at most.
  
  Epson is doing the same. I’m not sure if you can get scanner full features to work without their app.
  
  If it's a scanner too, you can't use half of it.
  
  Pretty sure you can just use the drivers. You certainly can on my HP printer.
  Yeah, the highlighted download on the website will be HP Smart And All It's Infernal Bullshit, but if you're in the habit of reading and not just clicking next, next, next then usually there's a basic driver to do what you want.
- Most of HP’s printers have a “Basic Print and Scan Driver” that is listed as “For IT Professional use only” on their support page. I fear the day where HP Smart is the only option.
  
  Try it.
  On USB with the basic driver specifically, modern HP printers will let you use the device for exactly 10 print jobs before it locks all functionality and demands that the unit be connected to the network and an HP account registered.
  Do not buy them. Find a brother instead.
  
  I pretty sure it is the only option for some models now.

Never use anything hp branded if you can help it
- That’s HPE though. To my knowledge they’re two completely seperate companies.
  
  That basically indicates where they get their money between both groups. Enterprise, from hardware sales and support programs. However, consumer side is basically just harvesting personal information and selling it
  
  In one of my previous roles as a sysadmin, our company signed a deal with HP to directly supply enterprise laptops to one of our clients as part of Microsoft's Autopilot deployment model, so users could get a new/replacement laptops directly and get it customized on the fly at first logon, instead of us having to manually build it the traditional way and ship it out. It worked fine in our pilot testing, so we decided to roll out to the wider audience.
  However, one problem which arose after the wider rollout, was that SCCM wasn't able to connect to any of these machines (we had it in co-management mode), and even the laptops which were able to communicate previously, stopped communicating. It was working fine in our pilot phase, but something was now blocking the traffic to SCCM and we couldn't figure it out - it was all okay on the network/firewall side, so we thought it could be a configuration issue on the SCCM server side so we raised a priority ticket with MS. After some investigation, we found the root cause - turned out out to be this nasty app called HP Wolf Security - which was new at the time - which HP started tacking on to all devices, unbeknownst to us. Wolf was supposed to be an "endpoint protection" solution - which no one asked for, especially since we already had Defender. Searched online and found tons of similar issues reported by other users, all caused by Wolf. Lost some of my respect for HP since then - who tf pulls stunts like this on an enterprise level?!
  
  Got an HPE Aruba switch, it's the only HP thing I've ever had that I like. Getting new firmware from HP was a pita though.
  
  Its not very good even for enterprise level, you still have to reinstall whole OS and run debloaters to delete hp spyware. A lot of pointless extra work for something you should be able to just hand out or do basic configurations.
  Maybe its good if you consider purely the hardware, but even then it propably has at least some way for hp to gather information no matter what you do to it. I wonder if anyone has thoroughly investigated what kind of stuff corporations put into stuff they sell.
- I told my girlfriend (now wife) when we moved in together that i had over rule: you're not allowed to purchase anything HP. May the company burn in hell.
  
  Make messes, leave food sitting out, invite shady people over...just for God's sake don't bring an HP product into my home!
- Never use anything Microsoft if you can help it
  
  I just wish one could help it. At work I mostly curse microsoft but at least they have some useful stuff. But nothing that is worth all the shit if there was any option. Its also quite blatant how they change their services to be dumber and more annoying to use most likely only to later start selling some premium version of it that is less painful to use.

Imagine running an OS that doesn't even respect you. I use Arch btw.
- Arch has disrespected me every time I've tried to install it.
  
  The Arch Wiki spit in my mouth, pulled my pants up to my chest, and called me names.
  
  For me it was the exact opposite. It did exactly what I told it to do.
- Autofellatio Linux crowd assemble!
- Imagine
  That's is so overused. Is this the new 'litchally'?
  
  Imagine being so insufferable you literally go around ridiculing how strangers communicate.
  
  It was new ages ago, now it's just something people sometimes say. If you want to mock people, at least try to be up to date.

I wondered what was happening. I got a notice my daughter installed this app (under 13 account) and was like why would she do that. We don't have any HP devices. Brother for life.
- What software do you use for monitoring this?
  
  Microsoft has built-in parental controls force-enabled for <13 accounts and child-opt-in for >13 accounts.
- Brother for life.
  You bet it. I got one toner refill for like $6 for Brother laser printer which is happily chugging along with factory installed drum after 2600 pages printed during over 6 year period. No DRM, no driver drama, and you know what happens to jet printers with such sporadic usage.

At work we pay Microsoft thousands for developer licensees, have windows pro, and there is still ads in the OS.... Windows exists to service them not us.
- If work doesn't care then you shouldn't care. At my workplace, they promoted a dumb woman who is in some sort of weird relationship with the manager. Its been 2 months and the backlog of work keeps growing. I am just enjoying watching the ship sink. I don't own the business so i don't care.
  
  Lots if employees have stock based compensation and therefore do own part of the company. A tiny fraction of a company's market cap can still be a huge component (over 50% is not uncommon in tech) of an employee's compensation.

Yes they are in fact doing this. I noticed this (working in IT) recently across several machines. Fucking Microsoft. I removed and blocked it immediately.
- What mechanism is installing it? We image workstations and they're very locked down and managed. Is Microsoft circumventing it's own control mechanisms or is this one of those "bring your own" situations where you don't really manage the machines.
  
  Its coming from the Windows store. Not sure what triggers it. I don't have any HP printers, so it's not like an auto-detect thing.

Yeah Michaelsoft we get it, you own the OS not us. Now quit doing this shit before you get slapped with more anti-trust lawsuits.
- I'll never install a legit copy of Windows anymore. For personal use I am using trusted enough modified versions that limit bloat and connections to Microsoft services. And I probably use those once a month.
  
  Please sir, may I have links?
- I started messing with Linux to build a home server a few months ago. I am now fully in the Linux/FOSS cult, and as soon as I figure out how to either run Adobe on Linux or use the alternative software, I am nuking Windows on my personal computers. The bloatware is insufferable, not to mention shit like this.
  
  I'm there with you, I built my NAS about 8 months ago and now I'm slowly migrating everything to Linux. Once I get an AMD GPU for my gaming system I'm going to nuke my dual boot and run solely Linux, with Windows in a virtual machine if I ever need it. I'll just run a dual GPU setup, RTX 3090 for the Windows VM and whatever AMD card I get for the host.

The Windows machines I manage at work have been auto downloading all kinds of shit like this lately. Microsoft is becoming really trashy.
- Becoming?
  Always was
  
  Yes, but now they're applying some of that good old corporation-style innovation to it
- The EU to the rescue.
  
  Not using products made to milk you to the rescue.

Install Linux. Saying it yet again. Be done with this crap, install Linux, if really really necessary, have wincrap in a VM, and now enjoy your computer
- To anyone who reads this: I know everyone talks about Linux around Lemmy, and that you've already been offered to install Linux a million times.
  I understand how much it puts you off.
  But this time, give a try. For real. Try it, there's nothing to lose.
  The reason we don't ever shut up about it is because Linux is just so much better that many of us don't imagine how we lived without it. Unironically.
  Spend a week on Linux. Install Mint, or Manjaro, and run them - not in VM, use dualboot. You can easily delete Linux afterwards if you don't like it, straight out of Windows. Run it for a week.
  And you'll be like us.
  
  Damn this got me fired up. Can I run MS Word and Adobe in Linux?
  
  The problem comes when you talk about gaming.
  You can talk about proton and such all you want.
  At the end of the day can I come home from work install some new game I want to play and probably have it just work, without feature compromises…
  One day maybe, but not yet.
  
  One of us, one of us, one of us...
  
  The second sentence of the last paragraph. That's what turns me off of switching. I have absolutely no clue what any of that means. Not all of us are tech savvy and Linux seems to be aimed at those who are. The jargon alone is enough to be maddening to the average person.
  
  No
  
  I'm trying Ubuntu now. I've had it installed for about three months. I only switch to Windows 10 to play Starfield. The only problem I've had... (delete, it's a long story I don't want to write). I had to reinstall, I couldn't figure out how to reinstall and keep my settings and apps, so I had to redo everything. I'm glad I still had Windows (because I wanted to play Starfield), because I would have been screwed--I had formatted the USB stick I used to install Ubuntu the first time. It's been probably over 10 years since I needed to use a recovery disc to get Windows running again.
  It's unfortunate that AAA game developers won't support Linux. But, the money isn't there, and we live under capitalism. Without reliable, plug-n-play, easy-as-Windows game support, Linux will remain niche. I'm sure the point has been made before, but here it is again, and still.
  
  Shit the fuck up
  
  Fuck off already.
- No. I like being able to play games without having to check if I can play them and really dont want to be associates with annoying af people promoting linux everywhere

That would explain why my Win10 desktop recently had an HP popup. There is a HP printer in the building but I've never printed to it from the desktop.

11 now basically ARP scans any network you join, adds things like HP printers found on the LAN to Device Manager, as"unknown device" in some situations, likely auto installing drivers in others.
Can't think of a better example of malware.
Stay in school and don't use Windows.
- Drivers for hardware connected to the PC are malware? Lol, ok
  
  When they're unwanted, on the network 500 ft away, you'd like your laptop to install those drivers?
- You can disable driver autoinstall I believe.

at least if it's auto-installed, you don't need to have your windows tied to a microsoft account just to set up your damn printer. there's some models where the stand-alone driver installer just doesn't work worth a shit, and the 'app' is the only thing that works (there's also a few that go the other way, the 'app' fails but the stand-alone driver is fine).
- If they let you install without a microsoft account. That's supposedly getting really hard to accomplish.
- Last Time I used the windows store you could install apps without an account, as long as they where free
  
  I recently had to set up a Windows 11 pc in S mode, and they needed S mode disabled to install Quickbooks. S mode could only be disabled through the Microsoft Store, and it wouldn't let me access the Microsoft Store at all without creating a Microsoft account. Eventually I managed to disable S mode by booting recovery media, and making registry edits from the command line there.
  Now that the machine is out of S mode, it lets me access the Microsoft store without an account for free apps. But from inside S mode (which many PCs ship with) it would not let me access the store at all without an account. It's also worth mentioning that you have to intentionally avoid connecting the computer to the internet during the initial set up, or it will require you to create a Microsoft account to use the PC at all.

Seems like it's getting installed on PCs which have an HP printer nearby even though they never used it. I don't have any printer at home and none of them have any HP app in them.

oh is that where that came from

I removed the official Microsoft Store and use Bloatnosey. Seems much better. You do need to recheck after any update though. Sneaky stuff.

This doesn't super surprise me. I own a Tobii 5 eye tracker. Brilliant piece of tech, but it infuriates me that the one and only way to get the drivers and software for it is to plug it in and let the MS store just install them for you.
- What do you use eye tracking for?
  
  Star Citizen and similar games.

Just regedit delete all programs that run at startup besides the default page file.
- If you do this and then later you face some sort of issue with Windows, remember that it might not be Windows' fault.
- And people say Linux is complicated...
- Imagine a world when instead of
  adding DWORD value of 32bit lenght named AllowCortana with value 0 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search in registry editor,
  we could do "sudo dnf remove cortana".
  
  we could do “sudo dnf remove cortana”.
  Remove-AppxPackage in Powershell
- Better yet just fucking format the hard drive and install Linux
- I've used Startup Delayer for ~15 years. Not perfect, but it really helps manage startup processes.
- Sounds like a great way to break your PC.
- There's plenty of powershell scripts to "reclaim windows" etc. I was a sysadmin in mixed environment for 15 years and Windows Enterprise you can disable all the creepy features on. This was critical infra environment with explicit firewall rules for everything and no traffic from the end user that didn't go through our proxies.

even on other operating systems HP requires software to be installed before printer will work
even cups on apple or linux will not connect to hp printers you have to use the hp software which is bundled with some distributions of linux
been an issue for a good bit now
https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/binary_plugin.html
- This is why no one should ever buy an HP printer

HP stands for heinous product.

macOS gaming can’t come soon enough
- Linux gaming is already here.
- It won't. The issue isn't technical. Apple has been so hostile towards the PC gaming industry that nobody cares anymore. It's generally understood that if you want to play games on PC then you use Windows, or even Linux if you are inclined. Nobody buys a Mac to play games; therefore nobody writes games for Mac.